Continuing the Clinic and RCFP’s multi-year effort to unseal PrimeCare Medical’s wrongful-death settlements, newly unsealed records show the prison healthcare contractor paid over $1 million to the family of a Bucks County inmate who died of opioid-withdrawal complications in custody.
Read about the case here: New court records show PrimeCare paid over $1M to Bucks inmate family
Weeks after Spotlight PA, the Centre Daily Times, and StateCollege.com—represented by the Clinic’s First Amendment Clinic and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press—sued over Penn State’s trustee “gag policy,” the board lifted the speech restrictions for emeriti trustees, though the newsrooms argue the change is a tactical move to evade review and that the policy still silences the board’s active members.
Read more about the development below:
Penn State trustees updated bylaws amid free speech lawsuit • Spotlight PA
Represented by the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic, Investigative Post is suing the Town of Orchard Park and the Orchard Park Police Department to compel release of police arrest reports tied to ICE and Border Patrol cooperation—records the town has withheld as confidential despite their being routinely public.
Read more about the case here: Investigative Post sues Orchard Park for suppressing police reports: Investigative Post
BeaverCountian.com announces its new partnership with the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project, which will provide the Beaver County watchdog outlet with free ongoing legal support led by attorney Adam Tragone across public-records fights, court access, libel defense, and more.
Read the article here: BeaverCountian.com & Cornell Law Take Aim At Government Secrecy – BeaverCountian.com
A federal judge has ruled that a jury must decide whether Delaware County officials retaliated against a local newspaper for its critical coverage, sending the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic’s case on behalf of The Reporter to trial and leaving punitive damages on the table. In her July 21 ruling, Hon. Anne M. Nardacci said the factual record precludes summary judgment.
Heather Murray, associate director of Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and managing attorney of the Local Journalism Project, said, “We are pleased with the decision and look forward to bringing this case to trial to defend the right of The Reporter—and every news outlet—to report critically on government officials. Importantly, the court also found that The Reporter is eligible to recover punitive damages in the event a jury determines that the evidence presented of county officials’ retaliation violated the First Amendment.”
The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic filed suit in December 2023 with co-counsel Michael J. Grygiel of Foley Hoag LLP in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York on behalf of Decker Advertising Inc., publisher of The Reporter, against Delaware County, members of its Board of Supervisors, and County Attorney Amy Merklen. The suit alleges that County officials violated The Reporter’s First Amendment rights when the Board revoked the newspaper’s designation as an official county paper in retaliation for its coverage of county government, stripping the paper of critical advertising revenue from government-funded legal notices.
Under New York County Law section 214, counties designate “official” newspapers to publish legal notices. A 1973 amendment to the statute ensures that politically independent newspapers like The Reporter are eligible for designation. Until its de-designation in March 2022, The Reporter had published the County’s public notices virtually since its founding in 1881.
A year after the de-designation, County officials sent an unprecedented letter to the publisher of The Reporter, signed by 39 County officials, demanding that the publisher “make immediate changes” to its coverage of the County.
The Complaint also alleges that The Reporter’s constitutional rights were violated when the County Attorney issued a “gag directive” prohibiting county employees from freely communicating with the newspaper’s staff.
session privilege shielded testimony about the Board’s de-designation deliberations.
The Reporter is seeking, among other things, a permanent injunction reinstating it as an official county newspaper through the calendar year following the court’s order, requiring the Board to award future designations based solely on articulable, content-neutral criteria, and ordering Defendants to immediately rescind the directive that prohibited County employees from speaking to The Reporter’s staff.
In addition to Murray, Clinic Director Mark Jackson, and Grygiel, Kelly L. McNamee and Christina N. Hernsdorf at Foley Hoag LLP and Cynthia E. Neidl at Greenberg Traurig LLP worked on the summary judgment briefing. Starting in 2023, several generations of Clinic students and summer fellows have worked on the case.
For further background and coverage of the case, see:
Free Speech Test Case Over Newspaper Retaliation Heads Toward Trial Law.com
Catskills newspaper’s case claiming retaliation from county government headed to trial – Times Union
Click the link below to read J. Dale Schoemaker’s Investigative Post article that quotes Associate Director Heather Murray and Local Journalism Fellow Kyle Clauss.
ICE refuses to say who works for them in Buffalo, upstate NY : Investigative Post
OKLAHOMA CITY – This week, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the Oklahoma Riot Statute’s definition of a “riot” is neither vague nor overbroad in violation of the United States Constitution, due in large part to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ recognition of an intent element of “willfulness”.
In May of 2020, a horrifying 10-minute-long eyewitness video of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked the largest protests in U.S. history. And in Oklahoma, communities throughout the state demanded police reform and racial equity. During protests, advocates faced many efforts by the City of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County to chill their free speech. One such effort included charging protesters with Incitement to Riot, relying on the broad definition of “riot” in Oklahoma statute to criminalize racial justice protesters criticizing the police.
The ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation and Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic challenged the constitutionality of the Riot Statute, arguing that it violated Oklahomans’ free speech and due process rights because it lacked an intent requirement. Without the requirement that the speaker intended to threaten violence, the statute criminalized speech protected by the First Amendment, like the protest speech of Oklahomans standing up against police brutality. With this week’s decision in Terry, et al. v. Dummond, et al., the Tenth Circuit found that the threats provision of the Riot Statute requires the State to prove that a person intended to threaten violence.
The following is a joint statement by ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation and Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic:
“The murder of George Floyd by police ignited nation-wide protests and renewed demands for racial justice and law enforcement accountability. We see the same demands made today, as law enforcement attempts to silence and criminalize protesters demanding accountability for our immigrant communities. This ruling helps protect the safety of Oklahomans as they take to the streets to demand better from our government, as the State may no longer leverage the Riot Statute against speakers with whom it disagrees. The threats provision of “riot” now requires the State to prove that a person intended to threaten violence, an even higher standard than required by the First Amendment. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and enshrined in the Constitution. The ACLU of Oklahoma and our partners will continue to fight against any attempts to violate the First Amendment rights of all people. Dissent is patriotic.”
Clinic’s Local Journalism Attorney Adam Tragone’s letter raising concerns about Ligonier Township’s practice of holding committee and subcommittee meetings in private is detailed in this July 31, 2026, Latrobe Bulletin article: Ligonier Township supervisors discuss Bulletin letter about Sunshine Act concerns | News | latrobebulletinnews.com.
The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic scored an important win last week on behalf of its client Rockland County Business Journal. On July 9, the New York Supreme Court granted the Business Journal’s Freedom of Information Petition for the release of documents related to the county’s award of an $18 million contract for the construction of a new county animal shelter – a recognition that the public has the right to know how its tax dollars are being spent by its own government.
Judge John P. Collins, Jr., wrote a strong and stirring Decision underscoring the vital importance of the press in the functioning of our democracy:
“A free press is not an ornament of democratic government; it is one of its load-bearing walls. The First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press was written into our Constitution precisely so that an independent Fourth Estate could stand between the citizenry and the government that citizenry funds, watching, questioning, and, when necessary, exposing. … A local journalist tracking how a public authority spends eighteen (18) million taxpayer dollars is engaged in exactly the work the First Amendment was written to protect — unglamorous, granular, and indispensable.”
The suit was brought in December 2024 after the Authority produced heavily redacted documents, withheld an entire category of records outright, and denied Traster’s administrative appeals. Judge Collins ruled that the Authority’s redactions and withholdings — justified only by boilerplate recitations of statutory language — “do not withstand scrutiny,” and ordered the records released within 30 days, with any continued redaction requiring a particularized, fact-specific justification submitted for the Court’s in camera review. Finding the Authority had no reasonable basis for denying the request, the court also granted Traster’s application for attorney’s fees and litigation costs, with the amount to be determined once production is complete.
From the Business Journal’s coverage of its win:“This ruling is a gift to the people of Rockland and to those living in New York, where FOIL laws are designed to hold government accountable. …Too often those seeking information give up because they are frustrated by a Goliath. Today was a win for every David that stays engaged in civic life and understands why it’s so important to have an open and transparent government.
The Cornell First Amendment Clinic represents journalist Chris Bragg and nonprofit news outlet New York Focus in a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case seeking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s schedule and calendars, which the Clinic filed in Albany County Supreme Court on June 30, 2026.
The FOIL requests seek the governor’s daily schedules from October 1, 2024, to present, and the governor’s Outlook calendar and fundraising schedule from October 1 through November 1, 2025. Gov. Hochul’s office, the Executive Chamber, issued a blanket denial of the FOIL requests, claiming that all the records are shielded from public disclosure because they are intra-agency records until the Chamber posts sanitized versions on its website. These web versions of the governor’s calendars contain selected information and are subject to considerable delay — the most recent schedule available on the site is from September 2024, one year and nine months ago.
“The public shouldn’t have to settle for a hand-picked highlight reel published nearly two years after the fact. New Yorkers have a right to know how their governor spends her days — who she meets with, what she prioritizes, and what she doesn’t,” said Clinic local journalism attorney Michael Linhorst. “Democracy depends on voters being able to see their government at work, not just the parts it chooses to show them.”
In its initial denial and subsequent appeal denial, the Chamber also cited four additional exemptions, claiming that some unspecified portions were attorney-client privileged, their disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion of personal property or could endanger the life or safety of the governor and her staff, and that they had to be withheld to guarantee the security of technology assets. The Chamber made the same arguments in 2014 when it sought to withhold Gov. Cuomo’s calendars, but it was unsuccessful.
The Clinic seeks a court order requiring the release of the documents.